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The Squirrels’ Tale
In early May of this year, I was taking out my garbage cans to the front curb the day before they are picked up, just like my neighbors do in the late afternoon with their garbage cans. When I turned to head back into the house, I heard a faint chirping sound and looked up and noticed this little guy clinging to the trunk of my tall palm tree. (right)
He was clinging to the tree at about seven feet off the ground and stared at me intently. He didn’t look sick or in distress (though I’m not a certified squirrel whisperer), and I wondered where his mom might be. After some time had passed, I assumed that perhaps a predator like an owl or a hawk had snatched his mom and flown away. The other predatory birds that keep an eye on the critters in our neighborhood are turkey vultures. A few years back, a turkey vulture snatched a rabbit that had been frequenting my backyard, then flew over the house with it and set it down in the middle of the street in front of my house, and within seconds had torn it apart…while momma and baby turkey vulture watched from a nearby tree across the street. So, it’s certainly possible that the little squirrel’s mom had been met with a similar fate.
As I stood talking to this little guy, it was starting to get late, and I had to check on my son and think about turning in for the night. I phoned my local Animal Control office and was instructed by the woman answering to leave the squirrel alone and that he would find a way to survive. Well, while I wasn’t convinced that she was correct, I also wasn’t really inclined to handle the little squirrel or bring it in the house, and thought that if a bird had spotted him, he would likely burrow further into the palm tree’s bark for protection…at least I hoped he would.
The next morning, I went out to check on the squirrel to see if he was still there. To my surprise (and, okay, my relief), he was and still fixing his gaze on me with his eyes. I went back into the house to get a small cup of water to see if he was thirsty and possibly dehydrated. As I stood trying to give him a drink and chatting with him, my neighbor, a woman (let’s call her Ms. J) who lives a few doors up drove by, parked her car in her driveway, and then walked down toward my home.
“Is that a baby squirrel?” she called out.
I answered in the affirmative and said that he hadn’t moved or skittered away and had spent the night in the tree, and that he didn’t seem to be afraid of me.
“I think his mom was maybe snatched by an owl or hawk,” I said.
“He looks a bit tired and thirsty,” she said.
As she said this, two other neighbors, a married couple (let’s call them Mr. and Mrs. K) who were old friends of mine, pulled up in their car on their way home.
“What’s going on?”
I pointed to the little squirrel clinging to the tree. They parked their car in front of my house and looked at the squirrel, which still was not frightened of four large humans staring right back at it. Mr. K pulled out his iPhone and looked up information on how to care for abandoned squirrels that appeared to be thirsty or dehydrated. Yes, there are websites with this information. A couple of sites recommended trying to administer Pedialyte.
“I have Pedialyte!” exclaimed Ms. J. “I just had an operation and was prescribed Pedialyte. I still have some left.”
“You might want to bring a syringe if you have one to put it in the squirrel’s mouth,” Mr. K suggested—she had noticed that the squirrel had some difficulty in sipping from the cup that I had brought out.
“I’ve got syringes, too,” said Ms. J. “I’ll be right back”
Within minutes she had returned. Mr. K gently pulled the little squirrel off the tree. The little guy did not resist. Ms. J sat on the lawn next to the tree and filled a syringe with Pedialyte and Mr. K handed her the little patient. The squirrel quickly began to drink from the syringe.
After a few minutes we all heard a chirping sound and looked up toward the top of the palm some 35 to 40 feet up. Suddenly another baby squirrel fell from the top of the tree down to the grass – a brave little jumper without a parachute. He or she obviously saw his or her sibling getting water and wanted in on the action. So, now our neighborhood impromptu squirrel triage unit was caring for two baby squirrels.
About ten minutes passed when yet another squirrel dropped from the palm that also didn’t want to be left behind. It was at this point that I recontacted Animal Control to see if they would take in the three squirrels and care for them until they got larger and could be released back into the wild. They deployed a truck to check out this dire emergency situation.
When the man from Animal Control arrived, we—four very concerned adults of the Neighborhood Squirrel Triage Unit—wanted an assurance that the three little squirrels, whom we had christened Alvin, Simon, and Theodore not be fed to captured predatory birds or snakes. The animal control officer chuckled and gave us his word. Mr. K, a retired major in the Marines, squinted hard at the AC officer and then nodded slightly in a sign of trust.
It’s September now, and the three little squirrels should be fully grown, and, if the AC man kept his word, frolicking somewhere in the region. Doubtful that they went to Los Angeles to start a singing group…but you never know.
Also doubtful that I would extend the same help for a cougar or coyote in distress. Just saying.
Published in General
Around here it’s just kittens, sometimes I have to wait until their eyes get goopy enough that they can’t see me and run away. Then I can catch them, and bring them into a separated area for treatment and “rehabilitation.” Along with their mother, if possible.
You obviously didn’t grow up in the country.
Me? Actually I did, but for some reason we didn’t seem to have any squirrels. Big grain fields but not many trees, that’s probably why. But occasional cats would come walking down the driveway from the road out front.
I love how your story shows a community effort. Very sweet!
Lovely story, and well done!
That sort of thing happens fairly regularly around here, and although I’m rarely rewarded with success, I find myself compelled to keep trying…
I managed to raise a baby Phoebe which had somehow got herself lost in the weeds several years ago. Minus her wings, she was about as big as the top joint of my thumb.
Efforts to find her nest or discover what it happened, didn’t bear any fruit so I put her in a box and went online to find out what to do. A few weeks later, I took her down the field and put her, still in her box, in a tree close to where I’d found her. She refused to leave. I tried it again a week later, and she flew away. The next couple of years, every spring, a Phoebe would fly up to the window, on the other side of which she’d lived in her box
I remember waaaaaay back when our girls were little, they came running into the house all excired. “There’s a baby deer lying next to the house!” I went outside, and sure enough, a fawn was curled up by the house. I managed to herd the girls back inside, and neutral observer called animal control. She explained the situation, and the guy ay the other end said, “Just leave the fawn alone and Mama will come get her.”
Apparantly that’s normal behavior for a doe – to leave the fawn alone in a safe place and go off to forage. Why the doe thought the side of our house was a safe place, I’ll never know. But an hour later, I went outside and the fawn was gone . . .
We needed a great squirrel rescue story today!! This one is an A plus! ALLVINNNN!!!
It might be fairly common. My MIL lives in an urban townhouse situation and exactly the same thing happened to doors down.
I enjoy stories of urban wildlife.
A couple of weeks ago I encountered a baby skunk on my (very early) morning bicycle ride through a local park, with no mother in sight. I declined to check further, although it looked really cute and very fluffy. [When do skunks develop their stinky defense mechanism? Was the mother nearby but not visible to me?]
A week later I encountered the youngest deer I had ever seen – no more than a few days old. Again, no mother in sight, but I didn’t stick around to find out if she was in the area.
A couple of years ago, some newly-hatched mockingbirds used the front porch and shrubbery at our house as a staging area as they learned to fly. Fun to watch from my study. In just a few days they grew from round little fluff balls into elegant fliers with long feathers. (One wandered into the house when we had the front door opened, and we had to catch it in a box and return it outside.)
The next year the next generation used our by then more mature back yard landscaping to teach the young ‘uns to hunt insects among the plants. More fun to watch.
Many years ago in a different house, a hawk who hunted the area highway medians for food used our quiet residential street how to catch rodents. I was fascinated by the progression the mother used. [Spoiler warning: Gross wildlife description coming] The mother deposited a rodent on the street for her babies to practice “catching.” Each day over about a week she left the rodent target less dead, so her babies got used to grabbing successively more active targets.
One of the building landlords in the city in which I worked for several years established a nest area that encouraged peregrine falcons to nest. From my high-rise office I could watch the adults courting each year before mating. Then a few months later I could watch the young ‘uns learning to fly and to hunt. Fun. Unfortunately (for the birds), peregrine falcons hunt at very high speeds (like 120 miles per hour), so the young ‘uns had a rather high fatality rate as they misjudged distances as they learned the hunting process.
When I worked at Master Lock I had an office with a window that overlooked a parking lot/courtyard area that had a telephone pole in it, the top of which was almost exactly the same height as my window, and it was maybe 15 feet away. One day I happened to look out the window and there was a peregrine falcon standing on top of the pole just taking apart a black bird (of some type) that it had caught. It took probably five or ten minutes to complete its meal. I think I had 7 or 8 people in the office watching with me by the time it was done.
Imagine a poor, dehydrated, semi-starved coyote who just needed a squirrel to bounce back to health.
Stupid coyote wasted all his energy chasing that stupid road runner.
Maybe nobody else remembered?
Here’s a quick video of Alvin eating some pecans that I gave him.
https://youtube.com/shorts/kLdgfGzVRBw?feature=share
OMG. What a cutie! (Noisy eater, though.)
A delightful tale delightfully told. Cheers to the NSTU!